arts, Central Asian artsthe literary, performing, and visual arts of a large portion of Asia embracing the Turkic republics (Uzbekistan, Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan), Tajikistan, Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, Mongolia, Tibet, Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan, and parts of Russia and China. As used here, the term denotes only those traditions that were not influenced by the religion of Islām.

This immense tract of land—with its highly varied topography and climate and its diversity of ethnic and linguistic backgrounds—encouraged the development of greatly varied artistic styles and traditions among the inhabitants of widely separated regions. These differences were magnified by the emergence of dissimilar religions, which in turn encouraged the formation of distinctive schools or traditions of art. Further artistic variances can be attributed to cultural time lag, for comparable stages of artistic development were not reached simultaneously throughout the area.

The arts that developed across Central Asia often fed or were fed by those of adjoining cultural regions or by such supraregional influences as IslāmIslam. Although reference will be made to such cross-cultural interactions wherever appropriate, more detailed information on these other areas may be found in the articles arts, East Asian arts; Islamic arts, Islāmic; and arts, South Asian arts. (The peoples and cultures of the region are treated in the articles Asia and Central Asia, and in articles on specific Asian peoples, such as Pashtun.)

Literature

Of the relatively few Central Asian languages that have developed written literatures, the most important are Turkic, Tibetan, and Mongol. (For a treatment of these languages, see Altaic languages and Sino-Tibetan languages.) This article will deal with Tibetan and Mongolian literatures from their inception to the 20th century and with Turkic literature from its inception to the 11th centuries, when the Muslim invasion introduced a period of Islāmic culture. Subsequent Turkic literature and Central Asian literatures written in Arabic and Persian are treated in the article arts, Islāmic. (For literature in Chinese, see the article Chinese literature.)

Turkish literature

The purely Turkish period in the history of Turkish literatures came before the conversion of the Turks to Islām and covers approximately the 8th to the 11th centuries AD. The oldest literary legacy of the period is found in the Orhon inscriptions, found in the Orhon valley, northern Mongolia, in 1889 and deciphered in 1893 by the Danish philologist Vilhelm Thomsen. The inscriptions are on two large monuments erected in 732 and 735 in honour of the Turkish prince Kül and his brother Bilge Kagan; they are carved in a script used also for inscriptions found in Mongolia, Siberia, and western Turkistan and called by Thomsen “Turkish runes.” They relate in epic and forceful language the origins of the Turks, their golden age, their subjugation by the Chinese, and their liberation by Bilge Kagan. The polished style suggests considerable earlier development of the language. Excavations in Chinese Turkistan have brought to light specimens of writings of the Uighur Turks from the 9th to the 11th century. Maḥmūd Kāshgarī’s comprehensive dictionary (1071?) contains specimens of old Turkish poetry in the typical form of quatrains (dörtlük), representing all the principal genres: epic, pastoral, didactic, lyric, and elegiac.

Tibetan literature

Tibetan was developed as a literary language from the 7th century onward as a result of earlier cultural contacts with neighbouring Buddhist countries—namely, the small states of the Takla Makan, especially Khotan (Ho-t’ien) and the kingdoms of ancient northwestern India (modern Gilgit, Kashmir, and Kullu) and Nepal. Scripts of Indian origin were in use in these countries, so the Tibetans also adapted an Indian script to suit their own very different language. By far the greater number of works produced between the 7th and 13th centuries are skillful translations of Buddhist works, largely from Sanskrit, on which Indian scholars and Tibetan translators worked side by side. The Tibetans had to create an entirely new (and therefore artificial) vocabulary of religious and philosophical terms, mainly by ingenious compounding of simple terms available in their own language. Apart from some religious terms in daily use, this vocabulary remains a specialized scholarly language. An indigenous literature was also produced: annals and chronicles, sets of spells and prognostications, legendary and liturgical works, all representing the remains of ancient oral traditions. Large collections of such manuscript fragments, all earlier than the 11th century, were discovered early in the 20th century in the Cave of the Thousand Buddhas near Tun-huang (at the eastern side of the Takla Makan).

The quasi-official work of translating authorized Indian Buddhist texts, which continued for six centuries, gave incentive to the Bon-pos (the followers of the pre-Buddhist religion of Tibet) to collect and write down their own early traditions; but in so doing they adopted many Buddhist ideas and, inevitably, used the new vocabulary. The followers of the earliest Buddhist traditions to enter Tibet (the Rnying-ma-pa, or “Old Order”) also committed their teachings to writing; and, conversely, these are interspersed with pre-Buddhist traditions.

The official Tibetan Buddhist canon was closed in the 13th century; it consisted of two parts, the Kanjur (“Translated Word,” teachings or reputed teachings of the Buddhas themselves) and the Tanjur (“Translated Treatises,” mainly commentaries by Indian teachers). By this time, however, there already existed some orthodox Buddhist works of Tibetan origin (for example, Mi-la ras-pa and Sgam-po-pa); and from the 13th century onward, under the impetus given by the prolixity of religious houses and orders, there were produced such lengthy and numerous collections of historical and biographical works, treatises and commentaries, and liturgy and religious drama that Tibetan literature must be one of the most extensive in the world. Just as in the European Middle Ages there was little secular literature worth the name, so there is none in Tibetan except for a great epic (Rgyal-po Ge-sar dgra’dul gyi rtogs-pa brjod-pa, “The Great Deeds of King Gesar, Destroyer of Enemies”) that recounts the exploits of the king and magic hero Gesar. This work grew through the centuries, assimilating whatever material pleased the fancy of the bards.

After the craft of printing from incised wood blocks was introduced from China, possibly in the 14th century, certain monasteries became famous printing houses. This form of printing continued until the Chinese invasion in 1959. Manuscripts and block-printed books are always of elongated shape, thus imitating the form of ancient Indian palm-leaf manuscripts. There are considerable collections in some European libraries—London, Paris, and Rome—but few translations are available, because of the small number of scholars of Tibet.

Despite the phonetic changes in the spoken dialects since the script was fixed, the Tibetans have never changed their system of writing. Thus, once the literary language and the various types of script have been mastered, the reader has immediate access to all literature of the 7th to the 20th centuries, though changes in style and vocabulary have left many obscurities in the earliest works. Since there is no modern style of writing, the 20th-century colloquial language can be written only in the traditional medium (as though, for example, one had to write modern Italian with Latin spellings and grammatical forms); the Tibetans themselves compose even personal letters in a conventional literary style.

Mongolian literature

Mongolian literature begins with the Secret History of the Mongols, an Imperial chronicle dealing with the life and times of Genghis Khan and his successors, written about 1240. Üligers, orally transmitted epic stories in verse, form the bulk of native literary expression. Highly stylized, these tales relate adventures of legendary heroes and villains. In spite of their great length (sometimes more than 20,000 lines), they are recited from memory by bards. Like other epics, such as the Greek Iliad and the Roman Aeneid, Mongolian epics are genuine artistic creations. The verses alliterate in couplets or quatrains, are seven or eight syllables long, and are characterized by parallelism. In addition to Genghis Khan, the epic stories tell of heroes such as Erintsen Mergen, Engke Bolod Khan, and Gesar Khan (the last of Tibetan origin). The villain of the epics is the many-headed monster, the manggus, whom the hero always defeats in the end.

Historical chronicles represent another important form of indigenous literature. Usually beginning with the creation of the world from primordial elements, they attempt to link the Indian and Tibetan rulers with the house of Genghis Khan. Such are the Altan tobchi (“The Golden Button”), composed about 1655 and giving a world history down to Ligdan Khan (1604–34); another Altan tobchi (written about 100 years later); and the Erdeni-yin tobchi (“The Jeweled Button”), written in 1662 by Saghang Sechen.

Mongolian written literature was profoundly influenced by the introduction of Buddhism about the end of the 1500s. Earlier surviving written works (on stone or paper) are mostly official documents; and no oral epics were written down until the late 1880s. The advent of Buddhism prompted translations of its sacred writings and related works. A Buddhist canonical collection, the Bka’-’gyur (or Kanjur; comprising the Sūtra and Vinaya of the Tripiṭaka), was translated and printed in 1635 in 108 volumes; the Bstan-’gyur (Tanjur), containing canonical commentary and noncanonical works in its 225 volumes, followed in 1741. Two especially well-known sermons (sutras) of Buddha are the Altan gerel (“Golden Beam”) and the Chagan lingqua (“White Lotus”), or, as they are known in Sanskrit, Suvarṇaprabhāsa and Saddharmapuṇḍarīka. None of these works, however, is indigenous.

Religious but nondogmatic birth stories (called in Sanskrit Jātaka) deal with Buddha’s meritorious deeds and, like the parables of Christianity, illustrate religious truths. Best known is the Üliger-Ün dalai (“The Sea of Stories”). Translations of other Indian fables are the Siddhi Kür (“Tales of the Vampire”) and the Bigarmijid (“Saga of King Vikramāditya”).

In the 18th and 19th centuries Chinese traders brought from China many Mongolian translations of Chinese novels of enchantment and romance, including the San Kuo chih yen-i (Romance of the Three Kingdoms) and others.

In the early 20th century T. Zhamtsarano, a Russian-educated Buryat writer and intellectual, founded the short-lived Mongolian newspaper Shine toli (“The New Mirror”). He also translated the works of some Western authors, such as Edgar Allan Poe, Jules Verne, and H.G. Wells.

After a Soviet state was established in Mongolia in the early 1920s, the power and influence of the Tibetan Buddhist church declined, and with it the literature it sponsored. There began to arise a revolutionary and socialist literature serving the people according to the current beliefs of the Communist Party. Popular themes were social criticism of the feudal past, with its exploitation of the people, and exemplary tales that showed new socialist values and educated readers to overcome the resistance of reactionary forces. Mongolian reliance on and gratitude for the fraternal Soviet Union and its assistance was an ever-present undercurrent. The rise of a system of schooling extending to the university level enabled many young Mongolian writers, poets, artists, and actors to achieve, within limits, a self-expression never before available to them. Leading 20th-century modern writers are Dashdorjiyn Natsagorj, Ts. Damdinsürün, D. Sengee, S. Erdene, and others.